Dear Octopus 1941
Dear Octopus
Theatre Royal Leicester 1941
Ticket for the show at the Theatre Royal Leicester
This play by playwright and novelist Dodie Smith had opened to great success in London in 1938 and had a young John Gielgud playing the lead role along with Angela Baddeley (later to find fame on ITV’s Upstairs Downstairs) and Marie Tempest.
With war breaking out, the play took to the provinces and came to the Theatre Royal in Leicester. The Leicester Repertory Company contacted the Cone Ripman school where Gillian was studying to see if they had someone suitable to play the part of Kathleen ‘Scrap’ Kenton, a role originally played by Muriel Pavlow in the London production. Gillian was chosen and shipped off to Leicester along with a chaperone. She appears under the name Jill Pyrke - only in 1943 does she change her professional name to Gillian Lynne.
Poster for the show below complete with ‘Air Raid Warning’
